The Solvable Problem of Energy Poverty

The United Nations’ goals for fighting extreme poverty—an effort being assessed at a summit this week in New York—will fall short unless nations also work to bring electricity and modern, safe cooking technology to the billions of “energy-poor” people around the globe, a new report says.

Providing modern energy to the very poor—the population that the United Nations seeks to reach in its Millennium Development Goals program—would require an annual investment of about $41 billion per year over the next five years, or just 0.06 percent of global GDP, said the report.

Tackling the larger goal of universal energy access— reaching all 1.4 billion people who lack access to electricity and the 3 billion relying on unventilated and inefficient wood, charcoal, and dung cooking stoves—would require only a modest increase in carbon dioxide emissions, the report calculated. That’s because the amount of fuel needed to address basic needs is small, and the opportunities for using cleaner energy are great. If the world takes the problem on, by 2030, global electricity generation would be just 2.9 percent higher, oil demand would rise less than 1 percent and carbon emissions would be just 0.8 percent higher than the world’s current trajectory.

“This is what is most compelling—the evidence that there is no reason why we should not make this commitment,” said Kamal Rijal, the UNDP’s policy adviser on sustainable energy and co-author of the report. “The money is not a problem and in terms of climate it is also not as big as people think. And from a health standpoint, it would save so many lives.”

You may also like

Recognizing the contributions of family farmers to food security and poverty eradication worldwide, FAO on Tuesday launched a new digital platform that aims to become a “one-stop shop” for information, data and legisl...

Women and men experience conflict in different ways and therefore understand peace in different ways.
The world is continuing to hear about the desperate situation of many women in conflict zones, in refugee camps ...

The UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that the Japanese government must halt its whaling programme in the Antarctic.
It agreed with Australia, which brought the case in May 2010, that the programme ...

Today the world remembers the victims of the Rwandan genocide, and recognises the inspirational reconciliation process that has drawn a country out of darkness and towards a bright future.
The genocide that devasta...